Wednesday, October 29, 2014

Travelogue Day 3


After the training was over the last day, I packed up the mountain of equipment that was my hiking backpack on the back of the motorcycle ( I don't know if I got a photo of how that looked or not ).
Headed off down the 210 again and up to Etiwanda Preserve.  Etiwanda is a natural preserve area that seeks to maintain the original beauty and splendor of bland rock and dead sagebrush. For being a nature preserve there was an awful lot of hiker trash, dog poop, and tissues. Nestled at the foothills of, well, the Foothill Mountains, this barren landscape is still better than open space parks in Arizona. Not by much though.
The vista from the trailhead is surprisingly nice, if you like looking at the smog of Rancho Cucamunga and it's surrounding cities. A few hundred feet above the valley, you have a great view, if you really want it. The trail continues up at this same incline which made me realize just how out of shape I really am. My destination was less than a two mile hike, but it was uphill both ways. There was a 700 foot elevation gain in that to get to the falls, which after two years of drought, I wasn't expecting much more than a trickle. I trudged for the first mile and could see some trees in the valleys ahead of me. This was no surprise as I had looked it up on Google maps beforehand, but it was a relief to see that they were in fact green and not brown rust dead colored.
As I got closer, I could hear the sound of water and realized that it was actually flowing. This moonscape mountain, and it's desert skirt surrounding it, was still flowing in this drought. And it was impressive. Not the amount of water although it was a lot more than I would have expected, but it was like an oasis in the desert. Oak, shady little brooks converging into a waterfall, the surroundings were impressive.
I like to think of myself as quite the outdoorsman, and was looking forward to not only taking this trip on the motorcycle but also testing out some new camping equipment, which I got to do and take some pictures of it.
Overall the trip was nice and do-able when I think of riding to Sturgis. Lots of dodging cars here vs dodging other cyclists. 1400 miles vs 100. Hopefully a better view of mountains in South Dakota. No training class at the end of the trip!

Wednesday, October 22, 2014

A short travelogue

Travelogue Day 1

I am planning on doing Sturgis next year which is a 1400 mile each way motorcycle trip, from home through Vegas, Utah, all of the way to South Dakota. Motorcycles from all over the country literally funnel through all of the highways across the country ending up in this little tiny town.

More on that next year.

I have some training for the rest of the week out in redlands california, only about 2 hours away from home. I'll be out for 3 days and I didn't want to fight the friday evening rush hour traffic back home so I figured what the heck this is the best time to try out a mini Sturigs run. I plan on camping out along the way to Sturgis so I packed up my sleeping bag, backpack, tent and all the other necessary equipment, precariously bungee corded it to the back of my motorcycle, and headed down the road. More accurately, I prepared myself for vehicular combat, riding down the 210 freeway is like dodging bullets while you're trying to ride a unicycle. The 210 is also known as "we don't know nothing about no stinking carpool lanes". Apparently the people who drive the 210 everyday just don't get the "2 or more people per vehicle" carpool lanes, as every time we've driven it the carpool lane is chock full of single riders. The carpool lane is supposed to be faster, but with all of these yahoo's in it it actually goes slower. Maybe these people do get it, as they've learned that there's no enforcement of the law, why obey it? But I digress. Where was I? Oh yes, I made it out to Redlands and checked into my Microtel, that's short for a microscopic hotel. I inquired with the receptionist about the neighborhood as I talked to her through the bulletproof glass. She assured me that it was safe enough just that "...there's a lot of people walking around." A quick call home and I was already fast asleep.
Day 2 and I got my first day of training done on software that is a lot like how google maps was developed. I won't bore you with the details just don't ask me about the kml format. It will be a long and tedious diatribe on how google is not accurate. Curvature of the Earth and geospatial elevations etc etc.
Walking around Redlands it was not hard to realize what the receptionist was talking about. There are a lot of homeless, its as if half the of people that came out here for raves just never left.